Schoop and Cava are Quantum Initiative Awardees

Leslie Schoop, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, and Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry, have each been awarded 5-year grants by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation in the amount of $1.7M. These grants are part of the foundation’s Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative (EPiQS), which strives to deepen understanding of the organizing principles that lead to complex collective behaviors of electrons in materials and engineered structures.

The Schoop lab works at the interface between chemistry and physics, using chemical principles to find new materials with exotic physical properties. Two specific areas of research include: working to understand the relationship between electronic structure (in relation to topological insulators) and chemical bonding in solids, and developing chemical exfoliation methods of novel two-dimensional materials.

The Cava lab studies the relationships between chemistry, crystal structure, and electronic and magnetic properties of non-molecular solids. These non-molecular solids include topological insulators and Dirac semimetals, superconductors, frustrated magnets, and thermoelectrics.

Through EPiQS, the Moore Foundation strives to accelerate progress in the field of quantum materials: solids and engineered structures characterized by novel quantum phases of matter and exotic cooperative behaviors of electrons. As stated in the grant solicitation letter, “The EPiQS investigator awards enable scientific breakthroughs by providing some of the field’s most creative scientists with substantial resources and freedom to pursue challenging and novel research directions of their own choosing.”

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation fosters path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements and preservation of the special character of the Bay Area. Visit Moore.org or follow @MooreFound.